Monday, December 26, 2011

REVIEW: TiMER (2009)

As far as romantic comedies go, TiMER is a creative one. The premise,
about a not-too-distant future where the latest trend is tiny “timers” that
tell people when they’re about to meet their soul-mate, is played so naturally
that you’ll believe this is reality already. It stars Emma Caulfield as a
slightly prude 30-year old whose timer still hasn’t gone off at all, much to
her dismay, as everyone around her is finding love left and right. She falls in
with a younger guy (John Patrick Amedori) who plays drums in a band even though
he’s already got a timer counting down.

Pretty much the core of the story is the way the characters interact
with each other and, in turn, with the timer devices – the film uses the
science fiction concept to bring out the aspects of its characters. Emma
Caulfield is pretty good, and succeeds in making us care about her, and her
sister played by Michelle Borth is rambunctious and loud but also caring – an addictive
personality on screen. John Patrick Amedori is Mikey, and while his character is a little generic as the whole ‘poor
young college student who messes around but has a heart of gold,’ he pulls it
off well.

This is a film about relationships, and while it won’t appeal to some
people, it really is a very smart and well-balanced film. TiMER talks clearly
about the choices people make in relationships and how we can’t always know who’s right for us. The concept is
used in a very Vonnegut-esque manner, taking a concept and exaggerating it to a
ridiculous degree, to illustrate the eerie possibility of where we’re going. The
world right now is obsessed with doing things more efficiently, doing them
faster. How long is it before we allow our relationships with other people to
be computerized and made super-efficient? Trial-and-error dating is costly and
ineffective – or that’s what the movie says, anyway.

TiMER begs the question, what if the person scientifically and
biologically calculated to be your soulmate isn’t really the one you want to
spend time with? All the science in the world can’t destroy the strange and
illogical fallacies and labyrinthine eccentricities of the heart.